Gerald Ford's famous paraphrasing of Nock's statement: "A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have."Address to Congress (08-12-74)

You get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it;
and whatever power you give the State to do things for you carries with it the equivalent power to do things to you.

Click to view the actual quote, in President Jefferson's own handwriting.

Still one thing more, fellow-citizens–a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.

I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically.

Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man?

There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.

Brigadier General Daniel Morgan, inspiration for the move The Patriot, was the best tactician of the Revolution...and opposed to preemptive war

As to war, I am and always was a great enemy, at the same time a warrior the greater part of my life, and were I young again, should still be a warrior while ever this country should be invaded and I lived — a Defensive war I think a righteous war to Defend my life & property & that of my family, in my own opinion, is right & justifiable in the sight of God.

An offensive war, I believe to be wrong and would therefore have nothing to do with it, having no right to meddle with another man’s property, his ox or his ass, his man servant or his maid servant or anything this is his. Neither does he have a right to meddle with anything that is mine, if he does I have a right to defend it by force.